By Jamie F., Guestblogger
Hola everyone!
I´m in Peru right now and loving it. I´m in the city of Cusco which is somewhat famous for its ancient Inca influences. There are ruins all over the city and these aren’t just your typically run of the mill ruins but marvelous structures that they don’t really know how they were built. The Inca walls are made with huge rocks and reach heights that really make it hard to fathom how they were actually able to build these walls.
Anyways, I got here on Friday morning after running into a friend from high school in the Lima airport in the middle of the night. My family picked me up at the airport and told me I needed to rest for a while because of the altitude (it’s almost 11,000 feet above sea level). They also gave me cocoa leaves for my tea which is supposed to help with the altitude.
The family is super nice and right now there are 10 people living in the house; they have 3 kids but one lives in Lima although she is home right now, plus the middle daughter plus her 5 month old baby and her husband, their son and two other students from Quebec so its quite a full house but I love it. Of course communicating isn’t always the easiest but we manage to get by and have in fact had some pretty in depth convos.
The family lives a little ways away from the main central square (Plaza de Armas) which is where all the tourists are but it’s only about a 25 minute walk to the main square and 20 minutes to school. The school is pretty organized and the lessons are great so far although I’ve only had one since yesterday and today are national holidays. I’ve already met some great other kids and its nice to be able to speak English because it’s much less of a strain on the brain haha. It was very interesting because at our orientation we went around and said where we were from and there were people from all over (obviously from the US but also Brazil, Holland, Germany, Switzerland…)
For the national holiday yesterday (its like our 4th) we went to one of the national parks where the Incas built yet another empire (Tipon). They built it all the way up a mountain and then the city was built into the mountain. They had one of the first and definitely a very ingenious irrigation system. To this day people still don’t know how the system works since the water comes from the ground and there is no melting snow or rivers or anything. And it still runs today!! They also had an impressive agricultural system where they made new plants. Overall it was fantastic and the views were incredible. Afterwards we went to the special local restaurant tucked away where they serve all types of special Peruvian meats in huuuge portions. Everything was truly delicious. At the restaurant, which is somewhat more rested in a park, we brought volleyball and a soccer ball and played many different games with them, that certainly kept us running around. It was a lot of fun and interesting to see that they have all these different ways to be with family and keep busy.
Many things here are very family oriented. They have the big meal at lunch time and most times everyone is there and then a small meal at dinner. Everyone is also at breakfast even though its at 7:30 or 8 all the kids are there and its just a great family environment.
Later today I’m going to do some more sight seeing with some friends from school because pretty much everything in Cusco is some sort of artifact. I’m just sitting in the Plaza de Armas at an internet cafe (which are everywhere, tourists and locals use them so they are very cheap).
Ciao!
Click for information about AmeriSpan’s programs in Peru.
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